Nuclear War

By John Singh and John Singh,Knight-Ridder Newspapers | February 10, 1992

The world's superpowers would have us believe that the nuclear threat is over, thanks to arms reductions. Hollywood has always believed otherwise. There's a range of movies about the nuke threat, from the sober treatise of "The Day After" to the pop psychology of "WarGames," the possibility of nuclear war will never be further away than your VCR.Here's a sampling of some of Hollywood's most memorable doomsday thrillers:BY DAWN'S EARLY LIGHT (1990) -- Even though it was made for cable's Home Box Office, this hard-edged thriller can compete with the best of theatrical films.

Iran! So long our enemy-in-waiting, it's just asking for it, y'know? No wonder Americans are confused about the idea of maybe not going to war with that country one of these days, at least according to USA Today, which reported: "The White House and Ira nface an uphill selling job to convince Americans to embrace the interim nuclear pact negotiated with Tehran last month. " Two out of three Americans who have actually heard something about the accord don't trust it, the paper explains, because, in essence, Iran took American hostages that one time (for no reason)

London. - "Kashmir is already the most militarized region i the world in terms of the concentration of military and paramilitary forces.''''Prominent Western analysts consider South Asia as the most likely zone of the next nuclear conflict.''These quotes from a new report published by the Henry L. Stimson center appear, as if on cue, as Kashmir flares up again. Pakistani-supported Muslim militants accuse the Indian army of razing one of the most beautiful old towns of the Himalayas, home of an important Muslim shrine.

The Sun observed in a recent editorial that President Barack Obama's call to reduce the threat of nuclear war "could not have been more timely" ("Avoiding Armageddon," Feb. 18). It would be impossible to agree more with that sentiment. Since the Cold War, the proliferation or threat of proliferation of nuclear weapons to rogue states and terrorist organizations has been a continuous specter in international relations. With Iranian talks next week and a North Korean nuclear test last week, the threat of nuclear-armed rogue nations has never been higher.

WASHINGTON -- An elaborate satellite system created to help fight a long nuclear war with the Soviet Union is being prepared for launching next month, even as questions mount in Congress about its cost and need, given the diminished prospects for such a conflict.Built to act as a space-based brain for nuclear war, the Milstar system would be a global switchboard -- a network of satellites to relay military commands long after Washington and the Pentagon were destroyed in battle. It would also be one of the most expensive projects in the Pentagon's history.

By John Johnson Jr. and John Johnson Jr.,LOS ANGELES TIMES | December 12, 2006

SAN FRANCISCO -- Even a small nuclear conflict could have catastrophic environmental and societal consequences, extending the death toll far beyond the number of people killed directly by bombs, according to the first comprehensive climatic analysis of a regional nuclear war. A few dozen modest Hiroshima-sized nuclear weapons exchanged between India and Pakistan, for example, could produce a globe-encircling pall of smoke, causing temperatures to fall...

Twenty years ago this fall, as the Orioles triumphed in the World Series, baby boomers flocked to The Big Chill and radios played Michael Jackson's Thriller, the superpowers drifted obliviously to the brink of nuclear war. That is the disturbing conclusion of a number of historians who have studied the bellicose rhetoric and mutual incomprehension of the United States and the Soviet Union, which then had more than 20,000 nuclear warheads between them....

HERBERT YORK, 87 A-bomb developer, arms-control advocate Herbert York, a leading physicist in the development of the atomic bomb during World War II who later became an arms-control advocate, died Tuesday in San Diego after a long illness. Beginning with his work on the Manhattan Project, Dr. York held a series of high-level posts over six decades and served as an adviser to six presidents. He wrote and lectured extensively about the threat of nuclear war. "There is no such thing as a good nuclear weapons system," Dr. York said in a 1983 interview with the Los Angeles Times.

WASHINGTON -- For the first time since the advent of the nuclear age, a large number of targets in the former communist world are being deleted from the U.S. nuclear war plan following a two-year, top-secret Pentagon review, say U.S. sources.The reductions -- well over 1,000 and perhaps more than 2,000 -- represent about 20 percent or more of the total group of about 8,500 Soviet-bloc targets that were to be struck by some 12,000 U.S. nuclear weapons in the event of an all-out war, the sources say.The changes represent a major "peace dividend" provided by the end of the Cold War. They also reflect anticipated reductions in U.S. long-range nuclear weapons as budget cuts and arms control treaties bite into the Pentagon's arsenal over the next decade.

WASHINGTON -- The federal government, citing the end of the Cold War, is abandoning an 11-year-old, $8 billion project on ways to keep the government running after a nuclear attack, according to military officials familiar with the program.The "Doomsday Project," as it is known, will officially end on Oct. 1.The project sought to create an unbreakable chain of command for military and civilian leaders that would withstand a six-month nuclear war, which was regarded as a plausible length for a controlled conflict.

President Barack Obama's call during the State of the Union address to reduce the threat of nuclear war could not have been more timely. The day before the president spoke, North Korea tested a primitive nuclear device, and the following day reports surfaced of Iranian attempts to buy technology that would greatly speed up its production of weapons-grade uranium. Mr. Obama's remarks focused on cutting the U.S. and Russian strategic arsenals in a way that maintains their deterrent function but reduces the chances of a conflict breaking out by accident or miscalculation.

This month, disapproval of Congress hit an all-time high — The New York Times reports that 82 percent of Americans give Congress the thumbs-down. Both parties get low marks, so the general disgust can't be attributed only to ideology. What the poll should call attention to is something more fundamental, a basic competency we expect our leaders to possess when they go to Washington: the ability to negotiate. Many members of Congress used to work in the private sector, where business people negotiate successfully every day. Yet this summer, congressional leaders showed themselves to be clumsy deal-makers, leading the country closer to the brink of economic crisis with every contentious meeting and press conference they conducted.

HERBERT YORK, 87 A-bomb developer, arms-control advocate Herbert York, a leading physicist in the development of the atomic bomb during World War II who later became an arms-control advocate, died Tuesday in San Diego after a long illness. Beginning with his work on the Manhattan Project, Dr. York held a series of high-level posts over six decades and served as an adviser to six presidents. He wrote and lectured extensively about the threat of nuclear war. "There is no such thing as a good nuclear weapons system," Dr. York said in a 1983 interview with the Los Angeles Times.

By David Wood and David Wood,david.wood@baltsun.com | November 30, 2008

WASHINGTON - It is a simple transfer of immense power. On Jan. 20, an unobtrusive military officer carrying a small leather-bound metal briefcase will follow President George W. Bush up to Capitol Hill. After the inauguration ceremony, he will accompany President Barack Obama back to the White House. Inside the attach?, known as "the football," are the codes to identify and authenticate a presidential order that could launch nuclear weapons and ignite a global holocaust. Routine to us, perhaps astonishing to much of the world, this peaceful passing of "the football" will propel Obama into a maelstrom.

By John Johnson Jr. and John Johnson Jr.,LOS ANGELES TIMES | December 12, 2006

SAN FRANCISCO -- Even a small nuclear conflict could have catastrophic environmental and societal consequences, extending the death toll far beyond the number of people killed directly by bombs, according to the first comprehensive climatic analysis of a regional nuclear war. A few dozen modest Hiroshima-sized nuclear weapons exchanged between India and Pakistan, for example, could produce a globe-encircling pall of smoke, causing temperatures to fall...

BOSTON - So it's come to this. The presidential campaign took off in New Hampshire, where the state motto is "Live Free or Die." Now it's heading into the home stretch, and the Republican motto is "Vote for Us or Die." In the days leading up to the 9/11 anniversary, the vice president finally raised the alert - color it crimson - that a vote for John Kerry was a vote for terrorism. If voters make "the wrong choice," he said, "then the danger is that we'll get hit again, and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating."

London.Will we live to see nuclear war? What only a year ago seemed totally remote, the door on the Cold War closed forever, now creeps up on us by an unmarked trail.It is alleged that Iraq might be able to explode a primitive nuclear device. Strategists talk of the need for tactical nuclear weapons if a land offensive gets bogged down at the same time Iraq is intimidating the allied forces and Israeli cities with chemical and biological weapons. When questioned, top officials in both the U.S. and British Administrations refuse to rule out the right to go nuclear.

INDIA AND PAKISTAN last met to discuss their dispute over Kashmir in July of last year -- talks that ended badly with claims that Indian hard-liners had scuttled any formal agreement. Now both nations must be brought back into sustained negotiations, and this can only happen with more pressure on both sides from the United States. The stakes cannot be overstated -- for the United States, which has short-term interests in rooting out Islamic terrorists in Pakistan, and even more critically for all nations interested in lowering the very real potential for the world's first nuclear war. Despite U.S. efforts since Sept.

Twenty years ago this fall, as the Orioles triumphed in the World Series, baby boomers flocked to The Big Chill and radios played Michael Jackson's Thriller, the superpowers drifted obliviously to the brink of nuclear war. That is the disturbing conclusion of a number of historians who have studied the bellicose rhetoric and mutual incomprehension of the United States and the Soviet Union, which then had more than 20,000 nuclear warheads between them....

In the early 1980s, when President Ronald Reagan fired up his rhetoric about the Evil Empire, top Soviet military and intelligence officials took him seriously. Believing that Reagan might attempt a nuclear surprise attack, they gave their intelligence outposts in the West orders to hunt for any hint that a missile attack might be imminent. One directive ordered Soviet spies to track the price of blood, on the shaky theory that authorities would purchase large blood supplies in preparation for war. Another required officers to monitor lights on at night in key government buildings in Western capitals, according to Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky's lively 1991 history, KGB: The Inside Story (HarperCollins, 832 pages, $20)